Brand U.S.A.

HEADNOTE

An Arab-American journalist and a Hollywood mogul want to change the way the United States fights for Middle Eastern hearts and minds.

IMAGE ILLUSTRATION 1

Mouafac

Harb wants many things. On a July afternoon in Washington, he wants to watch a presidential press conference on CNN, prepare for a meeting and get a news crew into Iraq. All at once. "You can be in Kuwait in 12 hours," he tells a reporter on the telephone, keeping one eye on the television. From Kuwait, the crew could travel, with a military escort, into neighboring Iraq, where Harb has 15 reporters gathering news for Radio Sawa.

Sawa is a U.S. government-operated radio station, whose programs are beamed to the Middle East from Washington-in Arabic-via satellite, FM and shortwave radio frequencies, and the Internet. Harb, a seasoned Lebanese-American journalist, is Sawa's news director. Launched in March 2002, Sawa recently added a radio broadcast to Iraq. It airs speeches by U.S. officials, reports from U.S. government journalists in the region as well as interviews with locals. Harb wants Sawa Iraq to be the primary source of news for Iraqis about the hurricane of post-war events reshaping the country.